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Do Not Resist

Of course, this issue is right up Radley’s alley. And it looks like a must-see.

What makes this movie so powerful is its terrifying portrayal of the mundanities of modern policing. I watched the movie weeks ago, but there are scenes that still flicker in my head. We all remember the clashes between police and protesters in Ferguson. We’ve seen the photos. We saw the anger and the animus exchanged across the protest lines. What we didn’t see were the hours and hours before and after those moments. We didn’t see the MRAPs and other armored vehicles roll in, one at a time, slowly transforming an American town into a war zone. We didn’t hear the clomp of combat boots on asphalt in the quiet hours of the early morning, interrupted only by fuzzy dispatches over police radio. […]

The striking thing about the footage is, again, the utter mundanity of the raid. A family was just violently raided over an immeasurable amount of pot. A man was arrested over that pot. The money he needed for his business was taken from him. Yet there’s no shame or embarrassment from the officers. There’s no panic that the whole thing was captured on video. That’s when it hits you. They don’t think they’ve made a mistake. This is what they do.

Definitely on my list. Not sure when that’s going to be able to happen, though as the distribution is limited at this point.

19 comments to Do Not Resist

In the United States and elsewhere, a militant police force is an open admission of a failure to govern by a government. For example, militant police forces are all the rage in Mexico, where they contribute to the illegal drug business, while wreaking havoc on innocent Mexican citizens.

The situation is similar to a commercial company where one finds an undereducated manager who cannot manage workers, so the incompetent manager resorts to the lowest, harshest, or most direct type of management, which is authoritarianism, a type of militancy. The company goes on to suffer, or even fail, as authoritarianism stifles the morale and imagination of its employees. Governments fail their citizens in the same way.

The government knows many people understand the drug laws to be a fraudulent concoction designed for social control, but it’s not relevant to the government’s problem, which appears to be that of exercising a Malthusian elimination of the poor. In a society as divided as it is in the U.S., the government worries only about its own survival—which is where the armor comes in. The armor is for them, not for us.

Today, California Governor Brown signed into law a bill that would in most cases prevent law enforcement agencies from profiting from seized cash or property unless a person has been convicted of a crime. The law is one of the country’s most far-reaching protections against civil asset forfeiture abuse.

The Chechen leader has apparently lost his mind (Duterte style) after learning about a rise in the rate of drug-related traffic deaths.

The head of Russia’s Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, has likened the threat from drug addicts on the roads to that of terrorists, telling ministers that security forces must not hesitate to use lethal force to ensure public safety.

“To hell with those who violate order in the Chechen Republic, they should be shot dead. It doesn’t matter if it’s against the law… shoot them dead! Got it?.. that’s the law!” Kadyrov said at a meeting with ministers and religious leaders, according to a recording that quickly spread across the internet.

Duterte, Chechens and Tennessee if politicians get their way… Pisstasting won’t pick up any booze or white powders after 48 hours. So most will be Cannabis users who are proven safer drivers than with booze or pharma pills. More bait and switch to implement laws that persecute politically incorrect imbibers. Reckless driving gets less prison time than safe driving while testing positive for pot. Impairment assumed regardless of amount. More profits for the private profit prisons and whiz quizzers. So the impaired oxy users might ween themselves off by using cannabis, except it is more likely to show up positive since metabolites stay in the system a lot longer. Another hysteria based for profit law punishing smarter choices.

“As prescription opioid abuse is becoming rampant, and marijuana is being legalized in more and more places,”

Prosecutors allege that the other driver was under the influence of hydrocodone, a prescription opioid painkiller, and amphetamines.

The penalties for impaired driving outstrip those for reckless driving: a range of eight to 30 years for impaired drivers or three to 15 years for recklessness.

Dye’s attorney, Olin Baker, said the blood test results don’t show Dye was actually intoxicated, just that his blood tested positive for traces of the substances. Baker said state law is poorly written and doesn’t specify what level rises to impairment.

“If they find anything in your system they’ll put you on trial and say that you are driving under the influence,” Baker said.

Arnold said he prosecutes many drivers high on benzodiazepines such as Xanax and opiates such as hydrocodone.

More indications that Central and South Americans are mobilizing to change their various countries’ militant drug policies. They realize the true villain in the room is prohibition, not people’s drug preferences. Clinton will get little cooperation in the future should she or other politicians choose to conduct drug business as usual in Latin America. Minus the cooperation and collaboration of its Southern neighbors, the US can wage neither drug wars nor world wars:

SEP 29, 2016 – […] It’s not inherently immoral to use illegal drugs, though in some cases it may be unwise. What’s immoral is the drug war. Legalizing and regulating drugs would have all kinds of positive impacts, including decreasing the United States’ gargantuan prison population, reducing aggressive policing, making drug quality safer, reducing user stigmatization, facilitating access to treatment and perhaps most important, stemming the carnage across Latin America wrought by prohibition in the name of American public health.

That’s why so many people in Latin America today are calling for the war on drugs to end. In March, former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico wrote that they “came to an unavoidable conclusion” that “the ‘war on drugs’ is an unmitigated disaster” after “examining our own failures on this front while in office.”

Berlanga is right to condemn the violence that has engulfed Mexico. But “just say no” didn’t work when Nancy Reagan was pushing it, just as it failed during the miserable experiment in alcohol prohibition. And it won’t work now. It’s a distraction from and an apologia for a drug war that kills en masse. When it comes to drugs, Americans need to take a look in the mirror — not to stigmatize drug use but demand better public policy.

The photo at the top of this post looks like the Harry J. Anslinger Memorial Circle Jerk.

If these boys want to play at war, don’t we have some poppies in Afghanistan that need guarding or sumpen?

It’s easy to play tough when you live in wine country where an MRAP would scare off tourist money. My special courage is called free will. It’s not impervious to the armamentarium of prohibitionist troops but it’s what I got.

FUCK SWAT. Psychoactivity is worth fighting for. We’ll NEVER kill the ideology behind authoritarian impulses or followers but we can neuter their asses through the ballot box by legalizing drugs, ALL of them.

To recap: FUCK SWAT. Ignorance is EVIL. Knowledge is GOOD. So said Socrates and I’m sure he was thinking of brain-dead boys and their military TOYS when he said it.

previously posted:
A person who believes that kowtowing to unjust laws is the American way holds himself out as very deserving object of ridicule. It’s not the American way or tradition. True Americans don’t obey unjust laws, we break them until they’re tossed onto the trash heap of history where they belong. Heck, even the “Tea Party” “conservatives” have named themselves after a shameful criminal act.

The very first Americans to break the law were 56 old white men who got together in Philadelphia on 7/4/1776 when they knowingly conspired to and did commit the capital crime of treason by signing the Declaration of Independence. The very first document produced by our government was the product of a criminal act and Americans have been thumbing their collective nose at unjust laws more or less constantly ever since. Unjust laws are not laws at all, and no one has any obligation to obey them. If you want a citizenry who respect the laws then the laws need to be respectable.

Rich, white men is the significant bit. Not much in the Constitution about the rights of the Founding Fathers’ many slaves, nor the white working poor who were often indentured to work without pay. Plus ca change.

They were stoned on China Chronic probably laced with opium streaks Marco Polo brought back. There were not a lot of fossil fools in 1776. So people aged normally. 70 was considered old. 40 was near retirement. 12/14 yr oids having babies was their norm. Now removing the CO2 from the earth, exhausting it into the atmosphere. Since Carbon dioxide has one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms, and a molecular weight of 44 grams per mole ( a certain number of molecules). The oxygen in the air is actually O2, or molecular oxygen, with a molecular weight of 32. Hence, carbon dioxide has a higher density, or is heavier than oxygen. Making the earth spin faster and us get older quicker. Same effects Noah experienced transferring the water onto the land. GOP religionists verify in biblical times many lived 900 years trying to put a positive spin on global warming. Try to take a 15 minute nap. 3 hours gone before you know it. I was informed pigeons are robotic entities with eye cameras from the planet Xeno and that’s why no one has ever seen a dead pigeon or a baby pigeon. Must be Harvest Time!

Ben Franklin and John Adams would visit different pubs, drink with the local common folk, and talk up revolution against the British in the process. That’s how cool they were. Today, one doesn’t see rich white dudes going into wine bars to promote anarchy, although it’s possible there might be someone who does.

Radicals…Jefferson promoted the idea of revolts for the hell of it. Being poor or wealthy in that era meant doing business with the misery and unfairness of a system that engendered wealth. British wealth was the problem then, much like corporate wealth is now. The East India Company and its cohorts were a royal pain when it came to the price of tea and everything else the colonists were forced to buy from the British.

Under legalization, I predict future setting stages for revolts and revolutions will be found in Amsterdam-style coffee houses scattered throughout various parts of the civilized world. A person won’t need to be wealthy to foment revolt, they’ll just need to be as smart as Franklin and Adams. Despots will have a hissy fit over these open venues of freedom gathering, but to no avail. Not even the United States, the greatest military and economic power on the planet, has been able to stand up to and defeat little ol’ marijuana.

I haven’t been anywhere, just spending a lot of time in my yard, gardening. Hubby’s leg is sort of healed, it’s now 3/4 inch shorter than the other, so he limps really badly barefoot and in most of his shoes. He took the right boot of his cowboy boots and had the heel built up but he even limps with that. He traded his Harley for a trike (H-D of course, it’s beautiful) and he’s out riding as much as he did before he broke his leg, but the recovery kept him so sedentary for so long he’s gained too much weight and is having problems with getting winded too easily, he’s complaining about having no strength or energy. I keep telling him they say it takes a full year to completely recover from an injury like that, but he’s impatient.

Sep. 30 2016 — IT’S NO SECRET that the Drug Enforcement Administration relies heavily on an army of confidential sources — men and women compelled, coerced, or enticed to share information with law enforcement, sometimes to alleviate their own legal troubles, sometimes for cash.

Precisely how those relationships play out, however, is often shrouded in secrecy.

A recently published audit by the Department of Justice has now offered a startling glimpse behind the scenes of those operations, revealing a world in which hundreds of millions of dollars have been doled out to thousands of informants over the last five years. Those informants include package delivery personnel, bus company employees, and Transportation Security Administration agents moonlighting as drug war spies — all operating with abysmal oversight and scant evidence of return on investment.[…]